The Vibratory Foundation

In HEA we sometimes get stuck in myth building and from time to time need to make our way back to the real world. If you wanted to you could spend your entire hobby life reading or being a part of audiophile theory creating and to go with this product categories that are there to take your hard earned money and leave you with something a little less than "the absolute sound". In the Tunee world our view is a little different. We take what is and build from there. We know that audio is vibration and don’t try to disguise it as any thing but what it is. We do our best to keep up on the studies of vibration scientifically and how it relates to the fundamental interactions that are at the core of Earth’s function.

If there is one thing you can bank on with Tunees it would be, we use the proven technologies that have come before us as our ongoing template of truth. Creating a make believe audio world is not high on our list of things to do. HEA is a creation that in some ways was a good thing but in many ways has failed. "killing vibrations" for example was a major screw up the way it was introduced to the hobbyist and implemented in the components we bought. From the 1990’s forward a mythical audio chapter was implemented that took us off course and all kinds of "Fix It’s" were suddenly needed to be designed to help keep us from falling off the edge of the flat planet. Yep audio tweaks are a huge industry all on it’s own, but it was always going to be the case that the hobby and industry would need to get back to it’s roundness.

I don’t blame the guy who is down on "tweaks" at all. From my point of view components should have been made variable to start with and this whole sidetrack of heavy over built components and speakers and the overbuilt tweaks that have been made to fix them could have never existed at all. It was a big expensive waste of time and could have been avoided if we understood one thing, audio is vibratory. Audio is part of the Earth and the Earth vibrates. Researchers now measure our moving Earth’s hum from 3 variable points of view that ranged from ocean currents to atmospheric turbulence. You have the ocean bed, the surface crust and the atmosphere. Three different types of vibratory structures all interacting and all affecting your sound. Can you isolate yourself from these with audio tweaks? Absolutely, positively, unequivocally No. Attempts at audio isolation existing within Earth’s forces is not going to happen no matter how many HEA myth makers spin theories. We learn this in 3rd grade but were bent on recreating the world regardless when we laid our eyes on our first audio boat anchor.

Now that we have gone through that era we can return to where we were back in the 80’s and move forward as if that misleading chapter was never there. Sure we’re still going to feel the pain of investing so much and then trying to fix it but all will be forgotten as we listen to our variable audio systems of today and the future.

Earth Is Constantly Vibrating

Scientists are getting to the bottom of Earth’s mysterious and constant vibration, tuning their instruments to the planet’s natural frequency to learn more.

It’s one of our planet’s little quirks that it is always vibrating even when there isn’t an actual earthquake shaking the land beneath our feet. According to a new study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists have now identified the frequency of that vibration, what they refer to as “the Earth’s hum.” The team of researchers used instruments that pick up seismic activity at the bottom of the ocean to decode the Earth’s frequency, separating it from other noise generated by things like waves.

Previous work to lock onto the planet’s signal has focused on land-based seismometers, so this research opens up the ocean floor as a laboratory setting in which to take these kinds of readings.

The study says the new measurement is important for understanding the vibrations’ source and what they sound and feel like at their point of origin. And according to the American Geophysical Union, which is also the journal publisher, “the new findings could be used to map the interior of Earth with more detail and accuracy.”

Scientists already use vibrations detected with land-based instruments to learn more about the planet’s interior, but collecting data from the seafloor can improve that process and give researchers more spots from which to take measurements than land ever could, since most of the Earth is covered in ocean and the new method would not require an earthquake to be shaking before observations can be made.

The group says the seafloor data will help scientists get a view of Earth as deep as about 300 miles.

“Earth is constantly in movement, and we wanted to observe these movements because the field could benefit from having more data,” geophysicist and lead study author Martha Deen said in the AGU report.

They detected the planet’s natural vibration at 2.9 millihertz and 4.5 millihertz, which is a measurement of how many vibrations there are per second. You don’t hear this frequency while you are just walking around during the day because the human hearing range is between about 20 Hertz and 20 kilohertz. The lowest end of our hearing range has a frequency that is thousands of times higher than that of Earth’s hum.

Experts are at odds over the source of Earth’s constant vibration. The AGU notes that ideas have ranged from ocean currents to atmospheric turbulence.

“Combining data from both land and ocean bottom seismometers gives seismologists a more complete picture of the entire hum signal compared to using land stations alone,” according to the AGU

How Fast Does the Earth Rotate?

The ground feels firm and solid beneath your feet. Of course, the Earth is rotating, turning once on its axis every day. Fortunately gravity keeps you firmly attached to the planet, and because of momentum, you don’t feel the movement – the same way you don’t feel the speed of a car going down the highway. But how fast does the Earth rotate?

You might be surprised to know that a spot on the surface of the Earth is moving at 1675 km/h or 465 meters/second. That’s 1,040 miles/hour. Just think, for every second, you’re moving almost half a kilometer through space, and you don’t even feel it.

Want to do the calculation for yourself? The Earth’s circumference at the equator is 40,075 km. And the length of time the Earth takes to complete one full turn on its axis is 23.93 hours.

Wait, 23.93 hours? Isn’t a day 24 hours? Astronomers calculate a day in two ways. There’s the amount of time it takes for the Earth to complete one full rotation on its axis, compared to the background stars. Imagine you were looking down at the Earth from above the North Pole. You’d see the Earth turn once completely in 23 hours and 56 minutes. Astronomers call this a sidereal day.

And then there’s the time it takes for the Sun to return to the same spot in the sky. Since the Earth is orbiting the Sun, we actually need an extra 4 minutes each day to return the Sun to the same spot. Astronomers call this a solar day.

Then we divide the length of a day into the distance a point on the equator travels in that period: 40,075 km/23.93 hours = 1,675 km/hour, 465 meters/second.

The speed of the Earth’s rotation changes as you go North or South away from the equator. Finally, when you reach one of the Earth’s poles, you’re taking a whole day to just turn once in place – that’s not very fast.

Because you’re spinning around and around on the Earth, there’s a force that wants to spin you off into space; like when you spin a weight on a string. But don’t worry, that force isn’t very strong, and it’s totally overwhelmed by the force of gravity holding you down. The force that wants to throw you into space is only 0.3% the force of gravity. In other words, if the Earth wasn’t spinning, you would weigh 0.3% more than you do right now.

Space agencies take advantage of the higher velocities at the Earth’s equator to launch their rockets into space. By launching their rockets from the equator, they can use less fuel, or launch more payload with the same amount of fuel. As it launches, the rocket is already going 1,675 km/hour. That makes it easier to reach the 28,000 km/hour orbital velocity; or even faster to reach geosynchronous orbit

Ok ready for more?

As an Earthling, it's easy to believe that we're standing still. After all, we don't feel any movement in our surroundings. But when you look at the sky, you can see evidence that we are moving.

Some of the earliest astronomers proposed that we live in a geocentric universe, which means that Earth is at the center of everything. They said the sun rotated around us, which caused sunrises and sunsets — same for the movements of the moon and the planets. But there were certain things that didn't work with this vision. Sometimes, a planet would back up in the sky before resuming its forward motion.

We know now that this motion — which is called retrograde motion — happens when Earth is "catching up" with another planet in its orbit. For example, Mars orbits farther from the sun than Earth. At one point in the respective orbits of Earth and Mars, we catch up to the Red Planet and pass it by. As we pass by it, the planet moves backward in the sky. Then it moves forward again after we have passed.

Another piece of evidence for the sun-centered solar system comes from looking at parallax, or apparent change in the position of the stars with respect to each other. For a simple example of parallax, hold up your index finger in front of your face at arm's length. Look at it with your left eye only, closing your right eye. Then close your right eye, and look at the finger with your left. The finger's apparent position changes. That's because your left and right eyes are looking at the finger with slightly different angles.

The same thing happens on Earth when we look at stars. It takes about 365 days for us to orbit the sun. If we look at a star (located relatively close to us) in the summer, and look at it again in the winter, its apparent position in the sky changes because we are at different points in our orbit. We see the star from different vantage points. With a bit of simple calculation, using parallax we can also figure out the distance to that star.



How fast are we spinning?

Earth's spin is constant, but the speed depends on what latitude you are located at. Here's an example. The circumference (distance around the largest part of the Earth) is roughly 24,898 miles (40,070 kilometers), according to NASA. (This area is also called the equator.) If you estimate that a day is 24 hours long, you divide the circumference by the length of the day. This produces a speed at the equator of about 1,037 mph (1,670 km/h).

You won't be moving quite as fast at other latitudes, however. If we move halfway up the globe to 45 degrees in latitude (either north or south), you calculate the speed by using the cosine (a trigonometric function) of the latitude. A good scientific calculator should have a cosine function available if you don't know how to calculate it. The cosine of 45 is 0.707, so the spin speed at 45 degrees is roughly 0.707 x 1037 = 733 mph (1,180 km/h). That speed decreases more as you go farther north or south. By the time you get to the North or South poles, your spin is very slow indeed — it takes an entire day to spin in place.

Space agencies love to take advantage of Earth's spin. If they're sending humans to the International Space Station, for example, the preferred location to do so is close to the equator. That's why cargo missions to the International Space Station, for example, launch from Florida. By doing so and launching in the same direction as Earth's spin, rockets get a speed boost to help them fly into space.

How fast does Earth orbit the sun?

Earth's spin, of course, is not the only motion we have in space. Our orbital speed around the sun is about 67,000 mph (107,000 km/h), according to Cornell. We can calculate that with basic geometry.

First, we have to figure out how far Earth travels. Earth takes about 365 days to orbit the sun. The orbit is an ellipse, but to make the math simpler, let's say it's a circle. So, Earth's orbit is the circumference of a circle. The distance from Earth to the sun — called an astronomical unit— is 92,955,807 miles (149,597,870 kilometers), according to the International Astronomers Union. That is the radius (r). The circumference of a circle is equal to 2 x π x r. So in one year, Earth travels about 584 million miles (940 million km).

Since speed is equal to the distance traveled over the time taken, Earth's speed is calculated by dividing 584 million miles (940 million km) by­­ 365.25 days and dividing that result by 24 hours to get miles per hour or km per hour. So, Earth travels about 1.6 million miles (2.6 million km) a day, or 66,627 mph (107,226 km/h).


Sun and galaxy move, too

The sun has an orbit of its own in the Milky Way. The sun is about 25,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy, and the Milky Way is at least 100,000 light-years across. We are thought to be about halfway out from the center, according to Stanford University. The sun and the solar system appear to be moving at 200 kilometers per second, or at an average speed of 448,000 mph (720,000 km/h). Even at this rapid speed, the solar system would take about 230 million years to travel all the way around the Milky Way.

The Milky Way, too, moves in space relative to other galaxies. In about 4 billion years, the Milky Way will collide with its nearest neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. The two are rushing toward each other at about 70 miles per second (112 km per second).

Everything in the universe is, therefore, in motion.

What would happen if Earth stopped spinning?

There is no chance that you'll be flung off to space right now, because the Earth's gravity is so strong compared to its spinning motion. (This latter motion is called centripetal acceleration.) At its strongest point, which is at the equator, centripetal acceleration only counteracts Earth's gravity by about 0.3 percent. In other words, you don't even notice it, although you will weigh slightly less at the equator than at the poles.

NASA says the probability for Earth stopping its spin is "practically zero" for the next few billion years. Theoretically, however, if the Earth did stop moving suddenly, there would be an awful effect. The atmosphere would still be moving at the original speed of the Earth's rotation. This means that everything would be swept off of land, including people, buildings and even trees, topsoil and rocks, NASA added.

What if the process was more gradual? This is the more likely scenario over billions of years, NASA said, because the sun and the moon are tugging on Earth's spin. That would give plenty of time for humans, animals and plants to get used to the change. By the laws of physics, the slowest the Earth could slow its spin would be 1 rotation every 365 days. That situation is called "sun synchronous" and would force one side of our planet to always face the sun, and the other side to permanently face away. By comparison: Earth's moon is already in an Earth-synchronous rotation where one side of the moon always faces us, and the other side opposite to us.

But back to the no-spin scenario for a second: There would be some other weird effects if the Earth stopped spinning completely, NASA said. For one, the magnetic field would presumably disappear because it is thought to be generated in part by a spin. We'd lose our colorful auroras, and the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth would probably disappear, too. Then Earth would be naked against the fury of the sun. Every time it sent a coronal mass ejection (charged particles) toward Earth, it would hit the surface and bathe everything in radiation. "This is a significant biohazard," NASA said.

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Mystery Vibrations Detected Inside Earth

The SAFOD drilling rig, located in Parkfield California, near the San Andreas Fault.

Credit: Earthscope/NSF


Tremors deep inside the Earth are usually produced by magma flowing beneath volcanoes, but a new study suggests they can also be produced by the shifting and sliding of tectonic plates. Scientists have recorded vibrations from underground tremors at a geologic observatory along the San Andreas Fault, an 800 mile scar in the earth that runs through California. The fault marks the boundary between the Pacific Tectonic Plate and the North American Plate.

Tectonic plates are large pieces of the Earth's crust that bump and grind like chunks of sea ice floating atop the ocean. The Earth's surface is made up of about ten major tectonic plates and many more minor ones.

Tremors are sustained vibrations that occur deep inside the Earth. "Unlike the sharp jolt of an earthquake, tremors within Earth's crust emerge slowly, rumbling for longer periods of time," explained Kaye Shedlock, the program director for Earthscope at the National Science Foundation. EarthScope is a project investigating the structure and evolution of the North American continent and the physical processes controlling earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Normally, tremors are produced by the movement of magma in cracks and other channels beneath volcanoes. But there are no volcanoes located near the Earthscope San Andreas Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) in Parkfield, California, where the new tremors were recorded.

These are the first recordings of non-volcanic tremors deep inside the Earth. They were recorded in deep boreholes that were drilled down to a depth of about 2 miles. Instead of volcanoes, the scientists think the subterranean rumblings might be caused by processes similar to those that produce tremors near the Cascadia Subduction Zone, an active fault that runs from mid-Vancouver Island to northern California. Those tremors are caused by the sliding of the undersea Juan de Fuca tectonic plate beneath the North American plate. The two plates making up the San Andreas Fault are different from those in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, however, in that they slide past another, much like two cars moving very slowly in opposite directions on a freeway, in what scientists call a "slip."

"Right now we have no recorded slip associated with the tremors, so we haven't been able to see the other part," Earthscope facility project director Greg van der Vink told LiveScience. Earthscope researchers hope to definitively link the two events by installing instruments called laser strainmeters inside the borehole which are capable of measuring slips as the tremors happen.